Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Are you in as much of a shock as we are? We've known for over a month now and we're both still trying to take it in. Our due date is August 4 and Poppy is very excited about becoming a big sister. More details to come...

[caption id="attachment_1482" align="aligncenter" width="717" caption="Christmas morning. It was all over as soon as she saw that Santa brought her a pink kitchen. She didn't want anything to do with opening any other gifts. She was "too busy playin' with my kitchen!""][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1483" align="aligncenter" width="477" caption="It took her hours to finally get to opening the rest of her presents. She loves all the puzzles she got."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1484" align="aligncenter" width="717" caption="Christmas day at my brother's house. This Thomas coloring book was the first gift she opened here and then she didn't want to open anything else. "Mama, you read Thomas to me?""][/caption]

I can hardly believe Christmas is over. Looking forward to things getting back to normal around here. Marc and I both have off this week and are looking forward to lots of fun stuff we have planned with Poppy. This morning was her very first visit to the dentist. She was a champ! She let the hygenist clean her teeth and the dentist do an inspection. Once again, little miss surprised us all. And then as a treat for doing such a good job at the dentist, after her nap we all went to PF Chang's for dinner and then out for her first movie theater experience. We went to see The Princess and the Frog and she absolutely loved it. She might have liked the popcorn and the pink lemonade even more than the movie. Tomorrow we're off the the Strong Museum of Play...

Sunday, December 20, 2009

And luckily she didn't like the way the frosting on the gingerbread house tasted.

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She has been cracking us up with the things she's been saying lately. One of her new favorites is, "I too busy, I'm playin'!" whenever we ask her to do anything. Oh, and she has become quite the back-seat driver. Here are a few typical statements that can be commonly heard in our car-

"Slow down!!! You're going toooooo fast!" (I don't think she actually understands if we're going fast or not because she says this even if we're going 15mph)

And she's all about the independence lately too. All during the cookie frosting fun, she just kept saying "Look mama, Poppy do it all by myself! I don't need help!" And when I told her it was time to get dressed today, she proudly declared that I can stay downstairs because she can dress herself, all by herself, and that she DOES NOT need help. About 1/2 an hour later, she comes downstairs looking like this (see picture above). When I finally talked her into letting me help her get dressed, I discovered that had 5 pairs of underwear covers on. Yes, 5.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Lots to catch up on around here. We had our 1st snowday of the year on Thursday (with hopefully many more to follow this winter!) and Poppy and I had a blast staying home all day long. At some point I told Poppy it was time to get dressed but she said she was too busy playing. So I took her pj's off and went upstairs to get her clothes and this is what I found when I came downstairs... (please excuse the fact that it's a terrible and blurry picture - Dear Santa, please bring me an external flash. Thank you.)

She set up a little mini office for herself at the end of the coffee table- complete with a travel mug of "coffee", an office phone and a laptop. Could she be any cuter?!

Then Saturday we headed to the train store to meet Santa. She was really excited that she got to go inside the train caboose, but got a little nervous when she saw santa. We all knew she wasn't going to actually sit on santa's lap, but she did do really well standing next to him - no tears at all! (this could have had something to do with the fact that santa had a little package and a candy cane to give her)

Saturday afternoon was the annual placing of the star on top of the tree...

Then Sunday morning it was off to Santa Land at Chestnut Ridge Park for another meeting with another santa!

She had a great time getting even more candy canes from santa, playing with her cousins, making crafts, getting tattoos and taking a freezing cold, wet, rainy hayride.

This is her new favorite look to give. She calls it "I winkin'!". We call it the stink eye.

This look of "awe" was from Marc telling her that she might see some of santa's reindeer in the woods.

And then even though it was cold and kind of rainy, these two daredevils decided to take a ride down the hill.Fun times!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Lots going on this weekend. It started with our annual walk to our neighborhood tree lot. We found the perfect tree within minutes.

Poppy was not happy to see that she wouldn't be able to ride in her red wagon on the way home, but she did agree to help daddy pull our Christmas tree.

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Then first thing this morning it was off to our big dance class Christmas Show!!! Now this wasn't quite as big of a deal as a recital, but it was up there. We've been talking it up for weeks and Poppy couldn't wait to get to meet Santa at the end of our dance. She's been practicing morning, noon and night lately...

Getting ready behind the scenes. Can you tell how excited she was?!

And then as soon as we went on stage, she clammed up. And then when she saw Santa, she literally curled up into a little ball and tried to hide from him. Surprised? We weren't!

But she was more than happy to accept flowers afterwards and tell everyone how much fun she had! Our little performer.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Poppy has suddenly turned into a little baby mama. All weekend she has been dragging poor little "baby" around, making sure she is fed, burped, diapered, nose is wiped, and is quiet. It's so cute to see how nurturing she can be.

Another things she's been doing all weekend is spreading out a blanket on the floor and setting up books and toys for herself and then saying "I'm at the beach!"

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So I had one of the most traumatic experiences of my life the other day. I had off on Friday, so my mom and I took Poppy to the Burchfield Art Center. Poppy and I have been there a bunch of times before and she's always super good about staying by my side and letting me know when she's had enough and is ready to go. We were there about 10 minutes when we noticed this HUGE, LOOOOOOONG table filled with white handmade ceramic vases all closely arranged. It was beautiful. There were hundreds of vases on it, if not thousands. Just as we were getting ready to leave the exhibit, I decided to try to take a picture of Poppy standing in front of said piece of artwork. And as I'm playing with the settings on my camera I can hear Poppy telling my mom that she wants her to be in the picture as well and then all of a sudden, CRASH. Poppy inadvertently touched one of the vases as she was pulling my mom's hand and the vase crashed into another vase and another and another. DEAR GOD, I (along with ever other patron in the museum that stopped and held their breath along with me) was sure that all of the vases were going to come crashing down in a domino affect, but luckily, it stopped after 3 or 4. And they didn't even break, they just tipped over onto each other. And as everyone sighed a huge breath of relief, Poppy goes "Uh oh mama, big mess!!!" I have literally been shaking for days. Can you even imagine that happening?!?! It was awful. We ran around looking for a security guard, who we never did end up finding, but by the time we got to the 2nd floor and looked down onto the exhibit, we could see that it had been fixed already. We left shortly thereafter and I don't think we'll be going back anytime soon. Here's a picture of the exhibit from the 2nd floor. I can't even describe how long that table is - like probably as long as the length of my house. I'm getting a headache just thinking about the whole thing.

Just look at that face. How could you ever be mad at that little stinker, even if she did almost ruin the biggest piece of artwork I've ever seen...

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Let the madness known as the holiday season begin! I feel like our lives have been crazy for the past couple of months. No time for relaxing around the house, walks around our neighborhood, or even visits to the playground. And from now until after Christmas it only gets crazier. And then suddenly- ahhhhhh. The calm after the storm. Cannot wait.

{Poppy and Lola - bff's forever}

Oh, and before I forget - a few of Poppy's favorite things...

Everything is "nice and warm". When we put her fleece pajamas on after a bath, she says "I'll be nice and warm?" If she sees that somebody is about to eat something that is too hot, she says "Wait until it's nice and warm." She tucks her collection of ratty's under her blanket and asks them "You nice and warm now?" So cute.

Favorite book/song is "Over the River and Through the Woods". We've been learning it at music school over the past couple of weeks and I keep finding picture books at the library that have the lyrics to the song in it, so it gets sung A LOT at our house right now.

Puzzles. She has a big floor puzzle and a smaller princess puzzle that she puts together at least 10 times a day on our coffee table. All about the puzzles.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Oh, she has been such a little pip lately! I put her in time-out for the first time in a long time the other day. When Marc got home from work he asked her why she went in time-out and she put both hands up in the air and said, "It happens." and walked away. Marc and I just about peed our pants.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

This past weekend we were off to Chicago to meet up with some of our blogging buddies. What a great trip! Poppy was a trooper - she loved going on an airplane, riding the buses, taxis and she even got to take a horse-drawn carriage ride through the city. I had an amazing time getting to know Michelle, Elizabeth and Christine and their families.

{She loved being in Chicago "this much"!}

Um, yeah, I could definitely live here.

Poppy playing peek-a-boo with Colin. This was about the extent of Poppy playing with the other kids. Apparently 3 days wasn't enough time for her to warm up to everyone... maybe next time.

{Spencer, Poppy, Olive & Colin}

We spent lots of time at the playground, the aquarium, the Navy Pier, shopping, and just hanging out getting to know one another. Like I said before, Poppy loved getting to experience all the different modes of transportation, but when I ask her what her favorite part of the trip was, she exclaims, "PIZZA!!!". While I did enjoy the pizza, the highlight of the trip for me was getting to know these families, whose blogs I have followed for so long. We've all watched and supported each other as we brought our babies home and now we all finally got to meet in real life! We had such a great time, can't wait to do it again next year!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

So I'm assuming this is typical 2 year old behavior, but this girl easily becomes OBSESSED with things. For instance, ever since our apple picking expedition, she asks for apple pie on a daily basis. Loves it, can't get enough of it.

A few of her other obsessions:

Stickers. We are putting in requests for multiple reusable sticker books for Christmas.

Thomas the train. She could play with her choo-choo's all.day.long. And have you ever watched that show? It's the worst ever, but she loves it.

Her rats. It all started with a stuffed rat. She must have "ratty" with her at all times. Marc was stopping by Ikea on his way home from a trip a few weeks ago, so I told him to pick up another ratty as a back-up. He gets a white rat instead of her pre-existing gray rat, and a baby rat too. So now she has Mr. Ratty, Mrs. Ratty and baby ratty. And she now needs all 3 of them with her at all times. And we still have no back-up ratty.

Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak is her fave book right now. We read it approximately 10 times a day. I'm pretty sure she has every word memorized.

Taking her pull-up diaper off. This morning was the 3rd morning we found her bare little bum in bed while she was holding her wet diaper. And apparently at my parents house today, she took off her pants and underwear during nap time and sat her bare little bum on the headboard of her bed while she was supposed to be napping.

"Daddy a boy? Mommy, Poppy girls?" Somehow she managed to figure out the difference between boys and girls and each morning she verifies with us that Marc is a boy and me and Poppy are girls. And then she continues to list every other person she can remember and tells us whether they are a boy or girl.

Blue. Apparently blue is her favorite color. If she sees something that is blue, or might be blue, she asks, "This bloooooooo mama?" She has no interest in learning any other colors.

We had such a great time this year. It was so fun to watch how excited Poppy was to go from house to house. Oh, and then she loved handing out candy to all of the trick-or-treaters that came to our house. Except if they had a scary mask on, then she would hold onto their candy and say "Poppy no like that!" while she pointed to their mask.

And apparently she didn't get the memo that she was supposed to sleep in an hour this morning for daylight savings time. She actually decided to get up an hour earlier than usual, which technically made it 4:30am!!! Every couple of minutes I kept hearing her say, "mommy, daddy, where are you? Open door mommy, daddy!". But she didn't sound upset, so I just tried to go back to sleep, hoping that she would do the same. After an hour of hearing her call out for me, I finally decided to get up. I opened her door to see that she had turned her light on, taken off her pull-up diaper, put her pajama pants back on, and was attempting to put her wet diaper on her baby dolls, while saying "Poppy no want that - it wet." Nice.